An interview with Laen (the force behind Dorkbot PDX)

[PT] recently interviewed [Laen], the man who makes it cheap and easy for hobbiests to have small PCBs manufactured. He created Dorkbot PDX’s PCB group order, a rapid turn PCB service which we see used in projects all the time (pretty much any purple PCB has gone through [Laen]).

Turns out his real name is [James Neal]. He’s a sysadmin by trade but deals in recreational circuitry at night. We were surprised to learn that the service has been rebranded. Its new name is OSH Park and it’s got a purple website with a new submission system. In the interview he discusses the genesis of the service. Inspired by a group parts order (that’s a mouthful!) with other hackers in Portland he saw a need for boards on which to mount them. The service has grown so much that he was spending 2-4 hours per night panelizing the designs. He made the wise choice to include an automated submission service in the new website that takes care of most of this work for him.

The rest of the interview spans a large range of topics. [Laen] shares his feelings on getting the boards manufactured domestically. He speaks briefly on the future of the service, and riffs on why open source hardware has value to him.

You serious? HaD is NOTORIOUS for very, very poor editing; it’s almost like a trademark! Kidding aside, I really don’t see why they don’t hire a proper editor. They would likely find somebody willing to do it for nothing!

People usually let these things go by, CB4, but really, the quality of the output seems to be going down, and getting someone’s name wrong is inexcusable. It’s right that the people who can actually read and write and want to see commentary which isn’t distracting because of typos, spelling, grammar, and other mistakes, speak up about it once in a while. It’s how we learn to do better. We all make mistakes, but whether we can go forward from that is up to you.

This dude has gotten me out of jams more times than I’d care to mention. His prices are freakishly good. Due to his mad cheap boards, ever since I joined the Ohio State University FormulaSAE team, we have had him make all of our boards. Laen PCBs are the official choice of the Formula buckeyes!